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ehm, yeah, n=2 will not get you anything useful...

that'll be like trying to determine the average salary in a company with only two known ones, which could be the janitor's and the CEO's

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> that'll be like trying to determine the average salary in a company with only two known ones, which could be the janitor's and the CEO's

Ironically that would be somewhat close to the actual average.

It would be significantly above the average unless the company is ridiculously top-heavy or has shockingly little variation in salary. Or if the "salary" for the CEO ignores certain compensation (eg: paid a salary of $1 + stock options).

Sure thing. I could have worded it better, but I was trying to say that it would be much more skewed if the two samples were, say, CEO and the CFO, or two janitors.

Even with n=1 you can get something useful. IIRC "on average" if you have ID x than the best population estimation is 2*x. Of course the error margin is immense, but it's still better than nothing.

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